Bringing Up Father — buf370423

Four daily panels by George McManus show Maggie, in her floral dress, receiving the card of a Lord Hammond Rye and hustling her reluctant husband Jiggs into presentable clothes before the caller arrives. When the knock comes she ushers the visitor in; the final panel delivers the gag: the lord greets Jiggs as an old acquaintance, leaving Maggie sidelined with a terse 'Aside, Maggie.' McManus's line is fluid and assured—Art Nouveau curves in the women's silhouettes, confident crosshatching, speech balloons integrated cleanly into the composition. *Bringing Up Father*, syndicated from 1913, was one of the strips whose daily and Sunday pages gave the emerging comic book its inherited grammar: recurring cast, sequential panels, dialogue balloons, and the comedic beat held for the final frame.